"Samsung's move to drop all requests for injunctions against Apple in Europe may not be enough to escape sanctions from the European Commission over the alleged abuse of its standards essential patents. EC Vice President Joaquin Almunia said during a press conference on Thursday in Brussels that his office will continue with its investigation against Samsung and will release a 'statement of objections' within the coming weeks."

Apple has design patents which can be reasonably easily avoided (look at Nokia, they have no problems) so the EU has no objections to it's actions.

Samsung is asserting patents which prevent the sale of ANY mobile device and that has huge implications on the market and so the EU has objections to it's actions.

Samsung could easily avoid all of Apples patents, but their devices would be horrible to use as it would fail all of the standard user experience expectations and would undoubtedly be a crappy device to use.

Just as Apple could easily avoid all of Samsung's FRAND patents, but it would also fail all of the standards and end up being unusable.

If Apple are allowed to register such common ideas and gestures, then they should equally be part of FRAND. After all, users expect the same level of user experience standards to operate a handset (eg green phone = make a call) as telecommunications expect the same protocol standards to negotiate a phone call.

In this day and age, no single company should be allowed to own a standard expected way to operate a device.

First of all, FRAND is a commitment Samsung makes to a standards body regarding the patent it has submitted for inclusion into a standard (they have a choice here). In return for a guaranteed stream of income for their IP, they have to make certain sacrifices so that essential standards are affordable to implementers.

Secondly, Samsung had already worked around Apple's iPad design by slightly altering the appearance of their tablet offerings. I also do not see why the phone icon has to have a green background or a square shape. On the other hand, there is no way for Apple to avoid Samsung's patents without breaking compatibility with essential standards such as UMTS, which would make their products useless.

Apple has design patents which can be reasonably easily avoided (look at Nokia, they have no problems)

The top Lumia models are, stylistically, oversized iPod Nanos 6th gen... Nokia is safe from silly Apple lawsuits probably only because it was part of the settlement between them, the one when Apple paid Nokia ~1 billion.

PS. And one would think you'd be the first to point out the similarity of new Nokia styling to that of iPod Nano 6th gen. Apparently not if it doesn't fit your narrative...